The ceasefire agreement is consistent with the strategic Israeli objective of undermining the prospects of an independent Palestinian state. By Ghassan Khatib The ceasefire agreement that was reached between Israel and the Hamas leadership through Egyptian mediation and that has been observed successfully by the two parties since Thursday marks a very significant development with potentially far reaching consequences. The fact of the agreement spurned a lot of contradicting reactions and analysis mainly because Israel has always expressed a principled position that it will not deal with "terrorists". Secondly, on previous occasions the several ceasefire arrangements that were reached in the past under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority were always unilateral and were never recognized or even acknowledged by Israel....
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